| OCR Text |
Show 428 PLATEAU OF OAXAMARCA. allpa is surrounded on this side by fruit gardens and by irrigated fields of lucerne (Medicago sativa, "campos de alfalfa"). Columns of smoke are seen at a distance rising from the warm baths of Pultamarca, which are still called Banos del Inca. I found the temperature of these sulphur-springs 55°.2 Reaumur (156° .2 Fahrenheit). Atahuallpa spent a part of the year at these baths, where some slight remains of his palace still survive the devastating rage of the Conquistadores. The large and deep basin or reservoir in which, according to tradition, one of the golden chairs in which the Inca was carried had been sunk and has ever since been sought in vain, appeared to me, from the regularity of its circular shape, to have been artificially excavated in the sandstone rock above one of the fissures through which the springs issue. Of the fort and palace of Atahuallpa there are also only very slight remains in the town, which is now adorned with some fine churches. The destruction of the ancient buildings has been accelerated by the devouring thirst of gold which led men, before the close of the sixteenth century, in digging for supposed hidden treasures, to overturn walls and carelessly to undermine or weaken the foundations of all the houses. The palace of the Inca was situated on a hill of porphyry which had originally been hollowed at the surface, so that it surrounds the principal dwelling almost like a wall or rampart. A state prison and a municipal building (la Casa del Cabildo) have been erected on a part of the ruins. The most considerable ruins still visible, but which are only from 13 to 16 feet high, are opposite the convent of San Francisco; they consist, as may be observed in the house of the Cacique, of fine cut blocks of stone two or three feet long, and placed upon each other without cement, as in the Inca-Pilca or strong fortress of Caiiar, in the high land of Quito. There is a shaft sunk in the porphyritic rock which once led into subterranean chambers, and a gallery, said to extend to the other porphyritic dome before spoken of, that of Santa Polonia. Such arrangements show an apprehension of the uncertainties of war, and the desire to secure the means of escape. The burying of treasures was an old and very generally prevailing Peruvian custom. There |
